Security
- Because the meaning of amateur transmissions may not be obscured, security measures that are implemented must be published. This does not necessarily restrict authentication or login schemes, but it does restrict fully encrypted communications. This leaves the communications vulnerable to various attacks once the authentication has been completed. This makes it very difficult to keep unauthorized users from accessing HSMM networks, although casual eavesdroppers can effectively be deterred. Current schemes include using MAC address filtering, WEP and WPA/WPA2. MAC address filtering and WEP are all hackable by using freely available software from the Internet, making them the less secure options. Per FCC rules the encryption keys themselves must be published in a publicly accessible place if using WEP, WPA/WPA2 or any other encryption, thereby undermining the security of their implementation. Such measures however are effective against casual or accidental wireless intrusions.
- Using professional or modified hardware it is possible to operate on 802.11a channels that are outside the FCC authorized Part 15 bands but still inside the 5.8 GHz (5 cm) or 2.4 GHz (13cm) amateur radio bands. Transverters or "frequency converters" can also be used to move HSMM 802.11b/g/n operations from the 2.4 GHz (13 cm) band to the 3.4 GHz (9 cm) amateur radio band. Such relocation provides a measure of security by operating outside the channels available to unlicensed (Part 15) 802.11 devices.
Read more about this topic: High-speed Multimedia Radio
Famous quotes containing the word security:
“Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
—James Madison (17511836)
“... most Southerners of my parents era were raised to feel that it wasnt respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadnt elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.”
—Willa Cather (18761947)